Eco-towns: creating a legacy

We have not started to build a new town in the UK for over 40 years. Instead, any new homes that have been provided in that time have generally been urban extensions - maze-like commuter satellites that are somewhat inaccessible without a car, rendering their sustainability credentials rather questionable. It is extraordinary when you consider that shortages of affordable housing have, on the political agenda, been the elephant in the room since the Sixties.

In April 2008 the government unveiled a shortlist of 15 potential eco-town sites (two of which involve my firm, Capita Symonds), whittled down from a much speculated-upon 50 sites. Typically these will feature 5,000-10,000 homes and will be designed to achieve zero-carbon development, provide a good range of facilities such as schools and retail outlets, and feature a diverse and cohesive community.

Eco-towns have quickly become a subject of heated debate, with citizens up and down the land reaching for the placards and even calls for a judicial review. What is more, some critics have accused the strategy of political expediency after the Department for Communities and Local Government announced this week that eco-towns would count towards existing local authority housing targets.

Eco-towns need to be seen in the context of the government's sustainable communities agenda, which defines the concept of sustainable communities as “the residential and workplace surroundings in which people live and thrive, where there is a balance and integration of the social, economic and environmental components that define a community area”.

While eco-towns need to make sense economically and environmentally, their social sustainability will be the hardest nut to crack.

Nobody can argue that this is a new concept - we have been building towns and cities in this country on the basis of these principles for thousands of years. However, changes in technology and lifestyles have meant that we need to remodel these concepts to suit our present and future needs and to manage the impacts they will have.

While eco-towns need to make sense economically and environmentally, their social sustainability will be the hardest nut to crack. If people are to become enamoured by the vision of eco-towns as the future for sustainable living, a lot more needs to be done to demonstrate convincingly that they represent an opportunity to embed key lessons learned in real, organic community development.

The fierce divisions sparked by the eco-towns initiative reflects a need for both the public and private sectors to learn from the mistakes of the past and not underestimate the importance of listening to public concern.

We need a step change in design quality and a move away from bland urban forms giving rise to soulless places that lack identity. We need to stop divorcing communities from the services and facilities that should support them. Communities grow around the services and places we share and give local meaning to. Above all, we need to remember that the successful places we have up and down the country have become successful only over time. They did not come flat-packed from Ikea.

The fierce divisions sparked by the eco-towns initiative reflects a need for both the public and private sectors to learn from the mistakes of the past and not underestimate the importance of listening to public concern.

Social capital is vital for establishing and growing a community. That is not something the private sector will do, or the public sector - it is what the people that live in these communities will do over the course of their everyday lives. It is everyday life that shapes a successful community, not iconic architecture or tokenistic community centres.

Real innovation in terms of how the public are engaged and consulted - in a truly diverse and inclusive way - and how this informs the way places and services are designed is the only way to ensure that positive networks and relationships are developed from the very start. How eco-towns achieve this is one of their biggest challenges.

As regeneration professionals, our job should be to make everyday life for residents and businesses easier, more enjoyable and empowering. We need to ensure that what we build, design and develop contributes to the creation of social networks and relationships.

Much work needs to be done in order for the eco-towns agenda to be seen as an opportunity to embed vital lessons on community development. These lessons are the ones that will prevent a legacy of eco-towns being a thinly veiled attempt to impose housebuilding schemes and instead make them a beacon of how we can once again build places to last.